Rȇve er action : Bloch, Heidegger et Levinas (Dream and Action. Bloch, Heidegger and Levinas)

Abstract

In this paper, I seek to rehabilitate the category of possibility and possibility’s conversion into action that Ernst Bloch’s concept of ‘concrete utopia’ represents, in particular as he elaborated this concept in the first and third volumes of his masterpiece, The Principle of Hope. What’s at issue here in concrete terms is the articulation of wishing or of will in the form of utopian subjectivity, and the conversion of wishing and will into choice and action. One may wish many things, the choices are many, but only one of them may be wanted. How then can the indecision that is inherent to wishing be linked to an idea of decision making and acting that is not at odds with future-oriented wishing? We shall start here with a Heideggerian critique of ‘pure wishful thinking’ and draw on Bloch’s reading of this notion in an attempt to defend future-oriented wishing as expressed in utopian thought and reconcile it with a philosophy of action.

Keywords

• possibility
• wishing
• desicion
• action
• dream
• utopia